Thoughts on Waka Flocka Flame and LOAK Announcement

@splinterlands announced a partnership with Waka Flocka Flame and LOAK this week. I've seen some mixed reviews and I wanted to jump into the conersation.

Announcement
Here's the link to the official Hive announcement.

We have some exciting news to share with the Splinterlands community!We would like to announce that Splinterlands is partnering up with Rapper, Recording Artist, and Reality TV Star Waka Flocka Flame and LOAK to bring you an exclusive NFT drop! We had some serious fun creating this NFT and hope that you are as excited about it as we are!

For those that don't know Waka Flocka is rapper that pretty well know, but in my mind is a B list celebrity. I thought the announcement would be covered on more new channels, but a quick search did not return that many results...

I don't want to be too critical because any publicity is good, but I was hoping to see some more brand deals with larger names within and out of the crypto sphere. An endorsement by Snoop or Mark Cuban would be huge for the game and the Hive ecosystem. I'm biased and believe we deserve that type of recognition based on what this community has built.

The NFT

The NFT will have dual-utility, acting as both a limited-edition playable card in Splinterlands, as well as a digital fashion piece that can be worn using Augmented Reality in Snapchat. The NFT will have two formats - one that acts as an in-game card and the other that acts as an external fashion NFT collectible. The NFT will be transferable between Splinterlands and WAX wallets and both regular and gold versions of the NFT will exist.

So I'm a fan of NFTs and to get a cross chain NFT with Snap integration is a cool application of the tech. No criticism here.

How To Purchase

The Waka Spiritblade NFT will be released for sale at 12pm EST / 17:00 UTC on Thursday, February 24th, 2022 in the Splinterlands store. The sale will be conducted in 2 phases. The first phase will consist of 500 cards being sold in the new Splinterlands’ Promotion Store. 480 regular foil cards and 20 gold foil cards will be sold. During the first phase of the sale, the cards will be sold for 5000 SPS AND 500 VOUCHER tokens. Said SPS will need to be unstaked and liquid in the account and the VOUCHERs will also need to be held in the Splinterlands account to purchase the card. Upon purchasing a card, there is a chance that it will be unpacked as a gold foil instead of a regular foil card. Once the first 500 NFTs are sold in the Splinterlands’ store, the last 500 NFTs will be released on Splinterlands’ AtomicHub storefront in order to highlight the collectible fashion portion of the NFT that also includes the Snapchat QR code. The timing, pricing, and other details of the sale on AtomicHub will be announced after the in-game sale is completed. This is where the remaining 480 regular foil editions and 20 gold foil editions can be purchased. In the AtomicHub store, both the regular and gold foil cards will be sold separately.

My biggest issue with the announcement is the price and the limited nature of the drop. Only the biggest whales with the quickest bots will win. It will be a lot like the land sale which was disappointing for many players like myself. I do like that this should drive up SPS and VOUCHER prices which benefits the community.

Last Note

Please note that starting with the next daily VOUCHER token drop, the amount of tokens awarded will no longer be limited to a max of 1M staked SPS tokens per account.

This little nugget of info was also a bid disappointing as this again favors large investors who will gobble up the daily supply of VOUCHER tokens leaving many small accounts out to dry. I understand that you should get your share based on your investment but with how lopsided the wealth is spread this seems biased even if it's truly fair.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about the announcement. I see it as mostly positive for the community and the few items I don't like I can see why they are being done. I'm pretty realistic and I'am focusing on the fact there's more development and partnerships that bring utility to the tokens. I'm hoping to see a boost in players and token price appreciation that outweighs the cost of the marketing.